Ocado opens first mini CFC in Bristol

• Supports growth plans of Ocado Retail, bringing more capacity online
• First mini CFC to go live in Ocado’s expanding ecosystem

Ocado Group plc (“Ocado”) and Ocado Retail Limited (“Ocado Retail”) are today delighted to announce that operations have commenced from the new mini Customer Fulfilment Centre (CFC) in Bristol.

The new 150,000 sq ft facility, a quarter of the size of Ocado’s Erith CFC, has the capacity for over 30,000 orders per week and will support around 815 jobs when it is operating at peak capacity.

Adding capacity for Ocado Retail

The Bristol mini-CFC offers local customers shorter lead times for delivery, while opening up more capacity for new and existing Ocado customers across the country.

Prior to the Bristol facility opening, Ocado Retail has been delivering c. 374,000 orders per week from Ocado.com. CFCs in Purfleet and Andover (85,000 and 60,000 orders per week, respectively, when at peak capacity on pre-Covid basket sizes) remain on track for opening in Q4 2021. Once all three new sites are fully ramped up, Ocado Retail will have increased capacity by 40% compared with 2020.

A new component in a unique and flexible ecosystem for Ocado’s partners

The mini CFC format is an important part of Ocado’s fulfilment “ecosystem” which includes a wide range in sizes of state-of-the-art automated sites, as well as software that enables more efficient manual order picking in stores.

As the grocery online market continues to expand, Ocado’s partners are building fulfilment networks with Ocado’s CFC ecosystem that will allow them to reach wide geographies, with the best possible economics and a market-leading proposition for customers. [see Notes to Editors]

Within that ecosystem, mini CFCs like Bristol enable partners to extend automated capacity to wider geographies, and to serve denser areas with shorter lead times. Ocado Retail has another mini CFC planned for go-live in H1 2022 in Bicester, while Kroger is currently constructing a mini CFC which will open in Romulus, Michigan at a similar time.

Supporting the local community

Ocado aims to play an active role in the community, with the 815 new jobs across a variety of roles from Personal Shoppers (our warehouse operatives) to Management as well as Engineers, Tech support and Drivers. At a time when playing our part in the community has never been more important, Ocado has continued to support local charities as well as donating food to help the most vulnerable. In 2020 customers donated over £4m to good causes, which was matched by Ocado through its ‘You Give We Give’ initiative. Ocado plans to have a positive impact on the local community and is preparing for further engagement as the site ramps up.

Luke Jensen, CEO, Ocado Solutions, commented:

“Grocery boardrooms worldwide are wrestling with the question of how to build online capacity that not only meets the growth in demand they have seen in the past year, but that also serves that demand profitably and flexibly in the long term, with a better customer offering than competitors.

“This mini CFC underlines the flexibility Ocado’s solutions bring to our partners, complementing the scaled benefits of Ocado Retail’s larger sites and shortening the order lead times available to customers in Bristol. We look forward to the next Mini go live in the UK with Bicester, and the first in North America with Kroger, in Romulus, Michigan”.

Melanie Smith CEO Ocado Retail, commented:

“We are so proud to be delivering the first orders from our newest CFC in Bristol today. Mini Customer Fulfilment Centres like this allow us to better serve our customers, as we provide the best quality products from the widest range of any grocer. We continue to put our customers’ needs first, prioritising speed, amazing service and exceptional value”.

Media Enquiries

Tulchan Communications, on 020 7353 4200 and ocado@tulchangroup.com

Notes to Editors

About Ocado Group

Ocado Group is a UK based technology company admitted to trading on the London Stock Exchange (Ticker OCDO). It provides end-to-end online grocery fulfilment solutions to some of the world’s largest grocery retailers and holds a 50% share of Ocado Retail Ltd in the UK in a Joint Venture with Marks & Spencer. Ocado has spent two decades innovating for grocery online, investing in a wide technology estate that includes robotics, AI & machine learning, simulation, forecasting, and edge intelligence.

About Ocado Retail

Ocado Retail Ltd is a joint venture between Marks & Spencer Group and Ocado Group. It is responsible for Ocado.com and Ocado Zoom.

With over 639,000 active customers, we are the world’s largest dedicated online supermarket. Customers benefit from an unbeatable range of over 50k products – including big-name brands, the full M&S food range, and Ocado Own Label products – unbeatable service, with more than 97% orders accurate and on-time, and the most sustainable grocery proposition with the lowest levels of food waste (0.04%) of any British grocer.

Every order is carefully packed in one of our distribution centres using world-leading software and technology. Shopping is then delivered direct to customers using a network of regional spokes in one of our vans. Ocado developed the first grocery shopping app in 2010 and continues to develop and innovate to offer their customers the best possible experience.

Our Fulfilment Ecosystem:

• CFC: Ocado’s larger CFCs deliver the best economics for grocery retailers, processing large volumes of orders, delivering to the widest geographies, and leveraging the significant optimisation benefits that come with aggregating huge stock volumes in centralized sites. These CFCs make up the large majority of the 17 Ocado sites currently under construction worldwide. They are typically 200,000 sq ft+.
• Mini CFC: Mini CFCs like Bristol enable retailers to serve online grocery in denser areas with shorter lead times. The Mini is a smaller centralized fulfilment format that holds a wide product range and is capable of serving 100% direct delivery and high volumes of ‘same day’ orders to a more limited geographic area. They can range in sizes between 70,000 - 160,000 sqft.
• Micro FC: Ocado's Micro-CFCs (such as for Ocado Zoom in Acton, London) are designed to serve 'immediacy' missions in small, dense catchment areas with a narrower but still extensive grocery range. They will typically range in size between 5,000 - 25,000 sq ft.
• In-Store Fulfilment (ISF): Manual fulfilment from stores, enabled by Ocado's software to support more efficient pick walks and order consolidation. Serving home delivery and pickup. In-store fulfilment is typically deployed in areas of lower population density, or to serve orders earlier in areas planned for automated capacity. Alongside automated CFCs Ocado's ISF software is being rolled out with Kroger, Sobeys, Morrisons, ICA, and Coles. It is also being used by Bon Preu in Catalonia.